ALONG THE HILLSBOROUGH. 85 
table luxuries, and land agents are quite 
right in laying all stress upon them as in- 
ducements to possible settlers. If the author 
of the Apocalypse had been raised in Florida, 
we should never have had the streets of the 
New Jerusalem paved with gold. His idea 
of heaven would have been different from 
that; more personal and home-felt, we may 
be certain. 
The river road, then, as I have said, and 
am glad to say again, was shell-paved. And 
well it might be; for the hammock, along 
the edge of which it meandered, seemed, in 
some places at least, to be little more than a 
pile of oyster-shells, on which soil had some- 
how been deposited, and over which a forest 
was growing. Florida Indians have left an 
evilmemory. I heard a philanthropic visitor 
lamenting that she had talked with many of 
the people about them, and had yet to hear 
a single word said in their favor. Somebody 
might have been good enough to say that, 
with all their faults, they had given to 
eastern Florida a few hills, such as they are, 
and at present are supplying it, indirectly, 
with comfortable highways. How they must 
have feasted, to leave such heaps of shells 
